


Hearth

by Dantooine



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Don’t copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Planet Naboo (Star Wars), memories of violence, reduced age gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26039557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dantooine/pseuds/Dantooine
Summary: Building a house out of the rubble is one thing; making it a home is another.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Leia Organa
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Hearth

When Leia wanders into the kitchen, wearing a faded Alliance-issue shirt smelling faintly like the wildflowers she'd picked that morning, Cassian thinks he might be able to understand the peace they'd fought so hard to bring to the galaxy.

Peace is something Cassian knew to be relative. The eerie disquiet stretching between bursts of blasterfire and the silence of the dead were both, by some metrics, peaceful. When Leia talks about peace, like she had in a speech to an audience of innumerable digital listeners a few days ago, Cassian imagines it as the laughter of children walking to school, carrying bags heavy with books instead of rocks and bottles, cutting paths through fields still covered in morning dew.

For a long time he didn't know what peace meant for himself. Cassian only saw it in fragments: the sun beating down on the stones of the Great Temple, or the hum of a U-Wing's engine as he leaps into hyperspace. After the signing of the Concordance, the document that had paved the path for freedom for peace across the galaxy, Cassian finds those fragments stretching into moments, hours, days. The rhythmic tapping of his knife as he minces garlic, the bubbling of the pot on the stove top, the smile on Leia's face as she sidles up beside him, all threaded together like letters in a sentence.

He's still unsure what peacetime means for him and Leia, as individuals and as a unit. Their journey to this moment, this little home on Naboo, wasn't linear, and that alone tells Cassian his future won't be, either. It doesn't bother him.

Cassian scrapes the garlic to the side of the cutting board, pushing it into the pile of neatly chopped onion, and starts to work on some elbina peppers. He removes the stems with ease, adding them to a quickly growing pile. Then he opens each of the peppers with a single, precise cut, allowing him to scoop out their glistening seeds with the side of his knife.

"You make it look so easy."

Cassian hums, the briefest of chuckles, and a moment later feels Leia's warmth circling him as her arms loop around his waist. They fit together effortlessly. While Cassian would normally revel in the press of her cheek against his shoulder, he murmurs: "careful." 

"Of what?" 

"Mmm. The knife - actually, the peppers," he replies. 

Despite the smile that flashes along her lips, Leia huffs. "I learned my lesson last time." She lets go of Cassian, sinking back on her heels to glare at the peppers. Leia has shrugged off blaster wounds but still seems to feel her eyes stinging with the most potent peppers Cassian could find onworld.

When Leia glances up again, Cassian's gaze has strayed from his work to her face. The kitchen's golden lighting colours his slightly amused but mostly fond expression with the hues of sunset on Alderaan.

Leia's careful not to touch him too much - Cassian is jumpiest when focused on a task - but she can't resist the temptation to reach out and cup his jaw in her hand. Not with him looking at her the way he is now. Cassian leans into her palm, his beard prickling her skin as he somehow continues to stem the peppers all the while. Leia thinks she might delay dinner tonight, but then Cassian says in an unfairly gruff voice: "you're better off chopping the nuna." 

Her sigh is loud, but if Cassian notices he doesn't say anything. She sees his lips quirk regardless.

She smiles through the rest of the preparations, watching Cassian scrape the cutting board clean into the pot before handing it to her. She carefully starts chopping the nuna into chunks, and waits for Cassian to finish setting up a frying pan before looking to him for approval. He takes in her handiwork with the same level of scrutiny he'd once leveled at the Concordance, but instead of nights of debates she's met with a nod and enough warmth in his eyes it seeps down her collar. Leia beams.

Her smile was the sort of thing rebellions were built on, Cassian thinks, a beautiful thing meant for places grander than the little house they'd built from the rubble the Empire left behind.

As she finishes the nuna, Cassian describes the merits of each seasoning he sprinkles into the frying pan, each scent a memory of a ballroom, an old friend, a new culture, a familiar market. Leia perches on the countertop, watching Cassian cook the nuna, leaning over every few minutes to inhale the scent of the spices that are at once are the basis of the stew and their conversation. Talk of the war is inevitable, as much a part of their lives as water is to the stew. But talk of causalities and battlefields has shifted to reconstruction, policy, new hopes. Leia's political visits to Theed; the roster of classes Cassian is taking; rehabilitation for rebel soldiers. 

Both of them had served their time as recipients of the latter, and perhaps this summer evening was just an extension of it. Maybe they would carry the soldiers in them for the rest of their lives, even if Leia becomes a Senator and Cassian becomes an architect. 

They're discussing the merits of him pursuing a full degree when Leia stills. Cassian is no Jedi, but he may as well be by the way he can read Leia. While her expression is as open and calm as ever as she listens to him finish a thought, the sudden stillness washing over her irks him.

He's about to ask her what's wrong when a thud rattles their front door.

Leia wordlessly slides off the counter to answer it. Only marginally soothed by the lack of worry in her expression, Cassian makes a fist around the nearest knife, recalling the locations of the blasters stowed under countertops and cushions in the few moments it takes for Leia to open the door. They are in peacetime, and Cassian knows only a handful of beings could find them here in the outskirts of Kadaara. Yet to be unaware of the long list of enemies Leia - and Cassian - have made in their time would be irresponsible.

When Leia opens the door to reveal a hungry rada-cat sitting on their doorstep, Cassian sets the knife back on the counter.

* * *

They eat dinner on the porch. Belly full of nuna scraps, the cat stretches in a pool of silvery sunlight, tail flicking in the long grass as it observes Leia's spoon clang in her empty bowl. She sets it on the porch beside her and leans back to absorb her surroundings: the grain of the restored wooden planks, the bees flitting between flowers, the sound of a knife gliding through a freshly picked shuura.

Neither of them have to look at each other for Leia to take the fruit slice Cassian offers her. By the time she's finished, another awaits her. The third slice she gently shoves back in Cassian's direction with a press of her fingertips. Cassian pops it in his mouth.

"Looks like it's going to rain tonight," Leia says after all that remains of the shuura is the juice on Cassian's fingers and the silky sweetness dousing Leia's words. The cat, she notices, has fallen asleep. Leia cranes her neck to peer at the sky and the layer of clouds on the horizon, thick like blue milk over caf. She can feel Cassian's gaze on her, just as she feels the chill in the late summer breeze. Leia doesn't bother pulling her shirt closer - just revels in the feeling.

"Is the laundry still on the clothesline?" 

"Nope. Took it in earlier," Leia replies, turning to look at Cassian with a toss of her braid off her shoulder.

"Ah," Cassian says, the calmness of his voice betrayed by the light playfulness in his eyes. "Yet, you are still wearing my shirt." 

Leia's lips quirk. She shifts, pulling her feet under her, and settles her head on Cassian's shoulder. "Thought it was mine."

"It is now."

Naboo's sun hangs low, peeking out from under violet clouds. Most of Leia's view is obscured by the dense trees dotting their surroundings. If she closes her eyes she thinks she can hear the not too distant ocean, but it may as just well be what Luke says is the Force calling to her. She shifts her mind to Cassian, the warmth radiating from him, the scratch of his beard against her forehead - now thicker than it had been in their days on rebel bases - the rise and fall of his breathing.

"You sensed it," Cassian says, not because he wants to point it out but because he knows Leia needs to talk about it. "The cat." 

She makes a sound at the back of her throat, somewhere between affirmation and ache. 

"Does it bother you?" he asks bluntly. Long gone are the days of tiptoeing around each other cloaked in the silks of Core tongues and a burden they no longer need to bear, freeing Cassian's shoulders for Leia to claim.

She sits up, chin still resting on his shoulder. "Does it bother _you?_ "

Cassian has more reason to loathe Force sensitives than she did, and he hadn't met Vader, much less had his mind wrung out by him. Leia grew up with stories about the Negotiator, the Hero with No Fear, their Masters, their Padawan, saw cloaked figures in flickering transmissions. She understands why her father told her those stories - for a moment she imagines a timeline where her only reference for the Force was Vader and the lies swirling in the depths of the HoloNet. Then she thinks about a little boy in the Outer Rim clinging to stories about the Republic and their Jedi saviours, only to watch those promises dissolve into smoke. She thinks about a Fulcrum agent and their tales of the Jedi's ignorance, their failures, the orphans they'd left behind.

"No," Cassian says, voice as firm and sure as the belief he'd held in their rebellion. It makes sense, in a way. Cassian and Leia have spent the aftermath of Jakku fighting hard to keep the Alliance's new government from repeating the same mistakes as the Republic. Even in name. The same logic applies to the Jedi. If Cassian had to choose the being that would form a new order of light-side Force users, he would pick Luke Skywalker.

Not Leia, because she has yet to commit to that path. So far she's rejected every offer of power that's come her way, after a lifetime in roles donned out of duty, not desire. Out of everyone Cassian knew, Leia wielded power with the caution it deserved, and was almost too willing to give it up. Like now. 

If anyone deserved to be sitting on a porch watching a summer sunset on Naboo, it was Leia. Even without the caveat of spending her days reviewing policy and advising fledgling governments across the galaxy. Cassian feels less deserving, but that belief of his was why she'd brought him with her here to Kadaara, to help the Naboo rebuild after facing the brunt of the Empire's wrath. And it helped, to be sitting in front of a house he'd helped build with his own two hands, a dinner they'd prepared still warm on his tongue. It is easier to accept good things when they came from his own doing. 

Harder so when another offers them, yet Cassian can find no complaint with the kiss Leia presses to his cheek. Something else bothers him, though. "You didn't answer," Cassian says softly. The cat lifts its head, ears perking up. Cassian watches as it rises on all fours before trotting off after some unseen prey. "Does it bother you?" 

Leia presses closer to him, seeking warmth in a quickly cooling night. Cassian shrugs off an arm of his jacket and wraps it around her shoulder.

"It bothers me," Leia says after a moment. "But it doesn't worry me. Somehow... I've always known." She touches his nose. "Maybe it's how I know you're thinking too hard again."

Cassian ducks his head, smothering a chuckle. "I don't think you need to be a Jedi to know that." 

"No," Leia says, grinning. "I don't." She pulls the jacket closer. They had not failed, as soldiers, leaders, bearers of hope. Leia tells herself she will not fail in her new roles: as a possible-Jedi, maybe-Senator, and definite-lover. 

"And I don't have to be one either to know you're cold. Come, let's go inside." 

"A few more minutes," Leia says, echoing the plea she utters every morning. So they stay.

* * *

Leia is asleep in Cassian's bed when he's startled awake by thunder.

It rattles his heart as much as it rattles the house. The sound reverberates deep within Cassian's mind, disturbing memories he thought he'd laid to rest long ago. Another flash of light offers some warning, but the next clap of thunder is so loud it knocks the air out of his lungs. He's unable to reign it in, his breaths coming closer together like the quickening rhythm of the impending storm. 

Cassian lies still on his back, fixing his eyes on the grey of the ceiling as he tries to calm himself. Leia's arm is slung over him. The rest of her body is similarly twisted as she lies on her stomach, tangled in his sheets. Her bed is in the next room, overflowing with fluffy pillows and fitted with the finest silk sheets, but tonight and most of their nights she's chosen to sleep in his bed that offers only a blanket, a stiff mattress, and a stiffer man. The significance of Leia's presence now is not lost on him. Too often he'd woken to the indifferent cold of an Imperial bunk, or Alliance-issue sheets damp with sweat.

Not the hand of a lover curling into his shirt.

Feeling like a ship in an asteroid field, he reaches for the blanket Leia's commandeered for herself, fists curling into the soft fabric for support. He screws his eyes shut, hoping to quell the nausea that rises with each thunder strike. Instead, Cassian finds himself unraveling into a battlefield, where the booms roaring in his ears are that of detonators and the light behind his eyelids is snow set alight.

The thunderstorm is no ally to his cause, the wind blowing the rain away from the house, leaving the spaces between claps of thunder devoid of the reassuring, steady drumbeat of rain that usually numbs his thoughts. He's left to be jolted by light, sound, terrible memories - and then, a reprieve. The storm continues to rage, but now Leia's arms are around him, reaching for Cassian as she does in her own nightmares.

It's enough to instantly yank Cassian from the realm of terrors, his mind clamping shut against the memories. Heart still racing, he's ready to comfort her when Cassian opens his eyes to see Leia's intent, lucid gaze. A flash of lightning highlights the concern in her eyes, and she pulls him close before the thunder makes the world shudder.

"C'mere," she murmurs, as softly as the beat of a whisper bird's wings, yet sheathed in a quality that drowns out the storm and his own thoughts. Cassian obliges, letting her cradle his head against her.

For so long they'd waged a battle of wits. If there was anyone to compete with Leia's self-deprecating selflessness it was Cassian. Each was notorious for burying their own grief to tend to others, so much so they earned the titles of ice queen and murder droid, respectively. So when they found each other, it was in a seemingly endless dance, where each deflected their own needs in favour of the other's.

She'd won out in the end.

Cassian realized Leia would stop reaching for him if he didn't allow himself to be held by her. And isolating Leia even further from her ability to grieve, a woman already so alone in her position as a figurehead, would be the misdeed that shattered Cassian completely. So he pretended for her sake, at least, he thought he was. Then Cassian realized his swollen tears were unmistakably real, having been withheld for so long it was the only facet of himself beyond his control. The clouds, after all, could not claim ownership of the rain.

Leia encircles him in her arms, holding him against her chest like she does on the few nights he sleeps in her room. Cassian finds the thrum of her heartbeat more comfortable than any down-filled pillow - and his warmth is all Leia ever needs to sleep. She strokes his hair until his breathing evens, letting the locks twirl and fall between her fingers, their untamed length a welcome distraction from the ominous booms of thunder. 

Cassian starts to ache - not the betrayal of his body, as it so often does, but the sort of ache that comes with his tensions releasing their hold on his body. His thoughts drift away from war and rain, towards the gentle press of Leia's hands on his back. The same hands that wielded blasters, that signed the Concordance, that planted a garden, rubbing the length of once-bruised spine, carding his hair.

The shaking abates, but the credit goes to Leia's hold: the grip of a soldier, not the mercy of the skies. Cassian allows himself to rest against her, eyes shut but no longer clamped tight, his own hands sitting along her waist.

Leia's breathing is crisp, that of a rebel watching guard, not a sleeping princess. Cassian reaches her with the rustling voice of a lover, lightyears away from the strained hush of a spy in the darkness. "Did I wake you?" he asks.

"No," she tells him, and it's the truth.

"You sensed it, then," he mumbles against her. Leia shifts, moving so she can see his face but not daring to pull herself away from him. Their legs are tangled in the blanket, and upon feeling her body tense, Cassian reaches over and pulls the blanket over them both.

"Perhaps," Leia answers when the blanket settles over them. "It doesn't bother me." She runs a thumb along his cheek, and presses the lightest of kisses to his forehead. "Now sleep, Cassi."

Cassian pulls her closer, each resting their head on the other's shoulder. A few more breaths, and Cassian realizes the storm has moved on, seeking new fields to drench with its fury. When his mind sinks, it's into the sweet clarity of a cloudless night sky and a world washed by rain. 

* * *

Morning brings pale yellow light that drenches every surface. It reaches Cassian's eyes first, waking him before Leia. He carefully maneuvers out of bed in the hopes of getting a couple mugs out of their cafmaker before Leia wakes up. Silence surrounds him as he works, made welcome by the brightness of their home, designed to harness Naboo's sun for their purposes. Cassian opens a window as the cafmaker chugs along, immersing himself to the cacophony of birdcalls and the crispness of a new morning.

He notices the rada-cat has returned. It peers at him with vibrant green eyes before slinking away. When the cafmaker spits out the last of their drinks, Cassian adds a healthy serving of milk to his own mug before pouring the leftovers into a bowl. He sets it on the porch. 

Tailed by long shadows, Cassian makes his way to Leia's room with their caf to find her already out of the fresher, pulling on a dress while bathed in early morning light. She reaches for the zipper, and Cassian has already set the mugs on the counter when she realizes she can't reach it within the confines of her tight sleeved dress.

"Help?" Leia asks. Cassian steps into the space behind her. They fit together effortlessly, the warmth of Cassian's presence warding away the chill from Leia's exposed back. 

It's one of the least complicated dresses he's helped her into, lacking the laces for him to tie with the same precision he uses to wire droids, sometimes incorporating the same wires as they hide weapons, datachips, transceivers into the folds of her clothing or the ribs of a corset. The dress Leia's wearing now is a simple, ankle-length sheath in a blue-green fabric that reminds Cassian of the depths of waters rich with life. Her hair is down, cascading down her back in brown ripples, like roots dipping into the earth. Cassian runs his hands through it as he pushes her tresses over her shoulder, revealing the zipper. It is a smooth gold that glints as Cassian takes it in his hands. He pulls it up, catching Leia's gaze in the mirror as he does so.

She smiles at him, a slight curl of her lips that would bypass the attention of most beings. Especially those used to seeing her more open expressions: in celebration, in kindness, in formality. Yet it was just as bright in his heart as her grin in the kitchen the day prior, something so brilliant it would guide any lost sailor home. Like Cassian.

He reaches for the belt Leia had laid out on the counter, one hand drifting to her lower back as he does so. She leans into the touch, eliciting the tiniest of smiles from Cassian that still manages to make Leia's heart stutter, after everything. He winds the strip of fabric around her waist and ties it with a simple bow.

"Your hair?" Cassian offers, and Leia shakes her head. He's happy to sit on her bed and sip at his mug of spiran while she starts to braid. Leia catches him frowning when he realizes he's sat on one of her countless pillows. She chuckles when he pulls it from underneath him and regards its frilly lace embellishments with a quizzical expression before gingerly fluffing it. He sets it at the head of her bed, shooting her a furtive glance under hooded eyes, carrying just a sprinkle of judgment and several servings of amusement.

"It's decorative," Leia says before Cassian can ask. She slides a pin into her hair, then another. "Not all of them are."

"Ah," Cassian says, and takes another sip of caf. It's laden with sugar, just as they both like it, but Cassian's is several shades lighter than Leia's. He continues to muse while watching Leia work, her lips slightly pouting as she concentrates. His mind wanders back to the thought he'd had yesterday, of Leia being meant for places grander than this; audiences larger than one man sitting on a bed too fine for his comprehension in a house built by a motley group of rebels used to taking them down.

But then he watches Leia's cheeks colour with a natural blush, not a hue taken from her compact, as she takes a break to reach for her own mug of caf, and Cassian remembers those grand places would see her as something to be displayed, frozen in time as a princess, senator, general, and nothing more. Leia is no cold statue, no dusty plaque, no wavering holo - she is the hearth that makes this house their home; the sun at the center of the galactic system.

One might not be able to tell, in this moment, unless one knew to look for the rigidity of her spine or the tilt of her chin as she holds it high even while tugging her hair into two ornate braids.

"You make it look so easy," Cassian says. Leia smiles as she ties an elastic around the end of each braid, finishing her work with a satisfying snap. Cassian is quite the stylist himself, the deft hands that once wired droids and detonators not a stranger to the intricate workings of Alderaanian hairstyles. Leia considers it a sweet nothing, like her offer to make eggs for breakfast.

Cassian's eyes crinkle as he rises from her bed, reaching for her empty mug before she stills him with a hand to his shoulder. 

"Maybe when you're not in a nice dress," he says as a white flag. "And maybe when you're not in a hurry to meet the Queen. I learned my lesson last time."

"I'm not in a hurry," Leia protests. "Should I be?" 

"I'll fry some for your toast," he offers as an answer, leaning over to collect her mug again. Leia thinks about delaying the meeting when Cassian presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth on his way back up. "Stop thinking that," he says after, warm breath on her cheek.

"I thought you weren't a Jedi. Am I that obvious?"

Cassian shrugs and the corner of his lips twitch. He holds her gaze, eyes bright and intense as the sun glinting in a mug of caf. "Does it bother you?"

"No," Leia says decisively, hands sliding into her pockets. "It doesn't." 


End file.
